September chip sales up, says ESIA

LONDON — The three-month average of global sales of semiconductors for September was $26.42 billion, up 2.9 percent compared with the previous month and up 26.2 percent compared with the same month a year before, according to the European Semiconductor Industry Association (ESIA).

This came in on a par with the estimate of Bruce Diesen, an analyst at Carnegie Group (Oslo, Norway), who had said September's three-month average semiconductor sales figure would be about $26.5 billion.

The ESIA reports figures compiled by the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) as a three-month average of the actual sales numbers. It is argued that this smoothes out the data which would otherwise display the effects of in-quarter reporting that tend to treat March, June, September and December as five-week months.

The annual growth of semiconductor sales was strongest in the Americas region where September average sales of $4.86 billion were up 39.5 percent compared with the September 2009.

China and the Asia-Pacific region also performed well on an annual basis. China's market of $5.73 billion was up 36.6 percent and formed a substantial part of Asia-Pacific's sales of $14.14 billion, up 26.1 percent.

Europe also performed better than of late with monthly averaged sales of $3.26 billion up 3.9 percent sequentially and up 24.4 percent compared with a year before. Japan, with sales of $4.20 billion, was up 3.7 percent sequentially but only 15.4 percent annually.